The Freshman Primer

The

 freshman PRIMER

k

An Unofficial Guide to College Life in the Ateneo (Or what the OrSem forgot to tell

you).

Table of Contents 2

Everything Will Be Fine: A General Idea of the College Life Chris Reyes

7 

Who Wants to Be a Beadle? Arnold Lau

14

Things I Wish I’d Known before Entering College  Vida Cruz

19

A Letter to the Rizal Library Miguel Llona

23 

Sailing Through Rai Villanueva

29

The Ultimate Guide to Dominating the Dean’s List Heinz Lawrence Ang

43 

Five Words That Don’t Mean What You Think Thi nk They Mean Arnold Lau

50

To Shift or Not to Shift  Jasmine T. Cruz

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 C H R I S

R 

E Y E S

E VERYTHING W I LL B E  F INE : A G ENERAL I  DEA OF  THE  C O LLEGE L IFE  5

THE

TRANSITION FROM

high school to college is a very tricky one,

  because you are not just dealing with a change in environment but also a change in lifestyle. For a freshman, tackling this phenomenon is like wading across a great ocean— it is an exciting yet difficult  journey. I should know what I’m talking about, because once upon a time I too was a freshman, and I too had to paddle my way through that moment.   As early as OrSem, I’m sure you've already sensed it—that tumultuous feeling inside of you, that voice in your head that’s shouting numerous possibilities, showing you multiple paths. “Should I just talk to her only? Or should I talk to everyone else as well?” 

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“This guy is kind of wild, he’s been places and done things. The wildest thing I’ve ever done is watch a concert----past my curfew!”  “They’re all doing the ‘Banana’. It's not my thing, but I don’t  want to be the odd man out by not dancing along.”  So many questions, so many voices streaming through your head, to the point that you realize you’re caught up in an overdose of  experience. People you’ve never met before, ideas you’ve never experienced, and situations you’ve never encountered.   Welcome to college, kid. Who said that learning only  happens in the classroom? College is the school of hard knocks, and in your four or five  years (depends on your course) of studying here in the Ateneo, you’re going to learn more than just your prescribed readings and lectures. You will learn what it means to be h uman.   Yeah I know it sounds like a rejected idea for a self-help  book, but what I’m telling you is golden truth. As a college student,  you will learn a very valuable skill tha t will be useful in the real world  (also known as the world after college). And let me be blunt about it: the real world is only a heartbeat away (yes, college life moves that fast). The first super-duper important skill you will learn is getting along with others. I don’t know about the peer-counseling program of  every high school but I’m pretty damn sure that you’ve been given activities to enhance your interpersonal skills at least once. Well guess what? It doesn’t hold a candle to what you are going to go through in your freshman and sophomore years. Getting along with others is not an exact science. There is no formula for making friends or avoiding foes. Rather, think of getting along as an art form. It is something that you've got to work on, it’s  your craft, an everyday habit that you must master. I’m not going to

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lie to you, I have a lot of friends, but also a lot of critics. It’s not easy  to get along with everyone, because your personality can only adjust itself to a certain degree. You’ll know your friends because they’re people with whom you seem to interact with naturally, no awkward lines, and no double-guessing of intentions. Just people exchanging ideas, numbers, and sharing memories. Those are your friends, be thankful you have them and try to play it smart and not piss them off. It’s also an added bonus if you can gather more along the way-- it's like collecting treasure except   you can’t trade your friends for other friends and you can’t always keep them in mint condition. Your friends will change over time and  while you can stop being in contact with them, you will never truly be rid of their presence and i mpact from your lives.   As you will all be in a block, making friends won’t be a problem logistically. Your potential buddies may share the same classes with you. That’s good news because due to your proximity   with them, you will be urged to interact with each other.  Although, you know what? If after awhile you realize it isn’t   working or you just don’t dig your block mates, it's alright. At that point, you should already be expanding your social network to people from other courses; sample the rich personalities walking around our campus. I have close friends in my creative writing block, but make no mistake: I have a lot of trusted and tested buddies in other blocks as well. Hence you shouldn’t be afraid to meet other people, don’t be intimidated by their courses. If you meet a Management kid or a Psychology major, remember that they’re still people you can still talk/eat/date/play with you. Don’t be afraid to break barriers. Okay, you’re probably thinking in the back of your head,  Hey, I think Chris is a loa d of B.S., I can get through college by being a snob and keeping to myself.  Well, chances are, not listening to me is worse than going to orals half-assed (been there, flunked that). I’m not telling you to go a round selling yourself to people like you-know-

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  what. What I am simply saying is that it pays to get around school and have a friend here and there, because the whole lone-wolf act only works in fiction, and life is stranger than fiction after all. You can never go wrong with having t ons of friends. It is very important to have an open mind when you are in the process of getting along with others. Having tolerance and understanding for the people around you is essential to making friends and building solid relationships. Believe me when I tell you that college is a lot like a five-star buffet table. You will have variety. Trust me, during your time as Joe college, you will meet all kinds of  people. People from the province, people from extremely humble origins, members of society’s elite, radical thinkers, traditionalists, religious

minds,

atheists,

vegetarians,

jocks,

intellectuals,

homosexuals and so much more. Just looking at my incomplete list of  the who’s who you will encounter, it is obvious that you need to open that mind of yours, if not to accept their ideas but at least to try and understand where they are coming from so that you don’t sound like a douche-bag. Patience, wisdom, integrity are three qualities that would prove to be important in your college life. Remember, not everyone can and will like you, there are some whom you will find hard to get along with. Not everyone is a friend—some will try to use you, others   will secretly hate you while a rare few will openly oppose you. You need patience for people like these. You have to learn to be composed and cool in order to outlast your critics, because history only honors the victors.   Wisdom is also vital, because sometimes people will try to  bring you down using deception and guile. I am sorry to say this but a close fried will probably betray you at least once i n your college life. It happens to everyone, and it’s how we learn to be wiser when it comes to dealing with people. However, don’t wait for that to happen. If you

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can practice some wisdom immediately during your freshman year, all the better. It always helps to know who’s pulling your leg a nd who is the real deal. Finally, there is integrity. The best way to make friends is to  be a person of solid character. Like I said, you may encounter foes: people you dislike, people who have the power to emotionally  damage you, people who can humiliate you. The key is to be the  better man, to be the bigger man. Never stoop to low levels; never sell out your ideals and  beliefs. As a freshman, the temptation to do such a thing will be great.   You may end up asking yourself, “What is so wrong if I bend a little  bit? No one will know anyway.” Getting along with people requires you to be someone that people want to get along with. You’re a freshman, so you may be entertaining thoughts of doing a personality make-over to make  yourself easier to get along with. It d oesn’t hurt to change things up a  bit. However, never forget the principles and ideals that you grew up  with. Always know who you are. College may be the school of hard knocks, but if you reflect on these pages, then I assure you—everything will be fine. 5

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 A R N O L D

L A U

W HO  W ANTS TO B E A B EADLE ?

 ONE OF THE WAYS college isn’t like high school is that teachers are no longer obliged to care. High school teachers are evaluated through a plethora of criteria, like whether their students actually managed to learn something under their tutelage. The continued employment of a high school teacher depends on whether their class ga ins knowledge, so it’s necessary for high school teachers to at least pretend they care about their students, even just to the extent that they do well on standardized tests. The selection and retention processes for college teachers, on the other hand, are more vague . For one, they are usually picked   based on how smart they are, a.k.a. their level of academic achievement (a master’s or doctorate degree). After all, it’s hard to find people who even know something about, say, the economic history of the Manila galleon trade, or eigenfunctions (say what?). At the same time, universities aren’t the same as schools. The purpose of  a school is to impart basic knowledge to batch after batch of eager,   young, bright-eyed pupils, while the purpose of a university is for students to discover new knowledge. When smart people are engaged

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in the pursuit of knowledge, having to stop to repeat what one learned to pesky undergraduates can be bothersome – especially   when a professor’s career, unlike that of a high school teacher, is not so dependent on whether their students actually learn a nything. In short, college professors aren’t obliged to care about their students. This means that day after day, they can walk in, flip open their laptops, lecture for an hour (which consists of merely  reading  what’s on their laptop), and leave. Professors don’t have to show any  concern whatsoever for whether their students’ minds are spongy  enough to absorb whatever they’re spouting in front of a lecture hall, and most of the time it makes little difference to their careers  whether half their students get F’s or A’s.  Ateneo de Manila University has something called the Magna Carta of Undergraduate Student Rights, which requires professors to set aside time for students to drop by and ask them questions, and  which also requires professors to actually show up for class. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already in Ateneo, so good for you –  you get to enjoy the benefits of teachers being compelled to interact  with their students. Just to give you an overview of what it’s like at other universities, there are professors who will show up only to hand out readings and give exams. There are professors who’ll dump the actual responsibility of teaching onto stressed-out and overworked graduate students even if their name is plastered all over the course syllabus (this is especially true abroad.) Of course, you’ll also have heard about teachers who DO care. Legendary, life-changing professors whom perhaps you could even befriend after their class ends – mentors for life. Ateneo takes great care to nurture people like these, and you can consider yourself  solb for that semester if you should ever end up in a class with a professor who values teaching. Recognize, however, that there will also be professors who see every st udent they teach as an amorphous  blob filling in dots on multiple-choice tests. Yes, you get to type your

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heart out against these professors at the end of every semester via online course & faculty evaluations. As one professor stated in front of the entire class, however, “I don’t actually read your comments in the evaluations. All I l ook at are the numbers.” A professor’s career is unlikely to be affected in any way by faculty evaluations unless pretty  much everyone gives them the lowest marks. Oh, another caveat: You often won’t get to choose your professors, especially if you’re a freshman. Whatever kind of  professor you get comes right down to how lucky you are. Do these sound like impossible odds? If you should be unlucky enough to have nodded in gaping approval at every single  word in this article while wringing your hands around the imaginary  neck of that Literature or Math professor of yours, then you should also know that there is a solution to this s ystem. Of sorts. In the summer of 2009, the Class Beadle System was implemented. These days, every single class for every single subject is required to have a beadle. A beadle is, to put it as generally as possible, that single person (or group of people in some cases) whose name and face the professor must know. If no one wants to become the beadle for a particular class and the professor fails to appoint one, the student council will take it upon themselves to appoint one. The beadle essentially acts as the conduit between a professor and the rest of the class. Given an uncaring professor who is as distant from his or her students as one could possibly get, the class beadle system forces that professor to talk to at least one of the students. It is the beadle’s responsibility to then make sure that this professor and the rest of the class are on the same wavelength. It is through the beadle, for example, that course materials such as handouts and readings are obtained. Depending on how a class is set up, the beadle can either collect a class fee, to be refunded at the end of the semester and to facilitate the photocopying of  materials; or they can just be the ones in charge of leaving readings at

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the photocopier for everyone else to copy and pay for themselves; or they can be the ones uploading PowerPoint presentations online for everyone to cram with. The beadle is also in charge of borrowing equipment such as cables and lapel microphones before class. Finally, last-minute announcements – including schedules for exams and homework assignments – will often be sent via text message to the beadle, whose responsibility is to let everyone else know about this information ASAP. If someone gets left out of the loop, the professor can say, “It’s not my fault, I told the beadle!”, thus ensuring never-ending hate for the ha pless beadle. That said, there are other disadvantages – as well as perks – to being a beadle. Or you can choose not to be a beadle, in which case  you’re going to have to learn how to work with whoever your beadle turns out to be. To be…   As previously stated, being a beadle can be a thankless job. Aside from risking the loss of budding friendships, it gets tiring to start heading to class ten minutes earlier than everyone else, probably   because you have to drop by either Faura AVR or Escaler Hall to get equipment, and to take a break ten minutes later than everyone else   because you have to return said equipment. And if you’re the forgetful type, then there’s the added possibility of accidentally  leaving your ID with the people handling the equipment, which is a major inconvenience. It’s also highly recommended that you be the sociable type, as you’ll have to get to know everyone (or at least obtain their contact information.) If you control a lot of valuable class resources, though, your fellow classmates will take the initiative in getting to know you (otherwise they’d flunk), which can lead to new  friendships kapag magaling ang diskarte mo.  Another effect of becoming a beadle rests on the fact that you essentially  are the class. This effect isn’t seen so much in your

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standard class of about 30 people, where professors can actually get to know everyone over the semester. However, you may end up with classes of about 70 to 100 people (usually taught by more prominent or accomplished professors), in which case the professor will focus much more on you. This includes being called on frequently for recitation, and being noticed more frequently (making it harder to, say, whisper to a seatmate or text-message someone under your desk.) As the beadle, you might even become the butt of the professor’s jokes; for example, if you’ve heard of the Facebook page “Overheard at the Ateneo de Manila University,” which consists of  anecdotes posted by members, all the anecdotes attributed to a certain professor also include his beadle. Being the focus of a professor’s attention forces you to be on   your toes all the time. It can also lead to humiliation and to the perception that you’re a suck-up. This last point would only make sense, though, if there were some fringe benefits to becoming a  beadle. Are there any? Yes.   At the end of every semester, professors input their final grades. Professors in subjects such as Mathematics will often have clearly defined grading systems based entirely on how many points  you score in tests. Professors in subjects such as Literature, Filipino, Psychology, Sociology, etc., on the other hand, tend to have more opaque grading systems that include secret grading curves and mysterious components such as “class participation.” In order to get a good grade with these kinds of professors and these kinds of  grading systems, it is absolutely crucial that at the end of it all, the professor remembers you for how active you were in class, how  enthusiastic you discussed the course material, etc. The easiest way  to ensure this is to become the beadle and hog a share of the professor’s attention. Some professors also recognize the added difficulties of   becoming a beadle and will give secret bonuses to their beadles when

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it comes time for grading. For example, a few professors are notorious for computing the raw grade of their beadles, converting this to a letter grade (say, B+), and increasing this letter grade one step higher  (say, A.) I refuse to mention names, but don’t be surprised if a professor you have asks on the first day, “Who wants to   volunteer to be a beadle?” and over half a dozen people stick their hands up in the air. From your point of view, it would make sense to find out beforehand whether the professors you’ve enlisted for especially favor their beadles or not, and strategize accordingly. Now, what if being in the limelight isn’t your thing? …or Not to Be Let’s face it – even if you wanted to be a beadle, only a couple of  people per class get to be beadles (the most by a class I’ve taken was three). If you’re part of the 96% of people who aren’t going to be  beadles, your concern – and I’ll put this as bluntly as possible – is to exploit the class beadle system to your advantage. Not to imply any sort of injustice, of course, but even if that   beadle was your sworn enemy in high school, even if that beadle is  your best friend’s girlfriend (who used to be yours), you’re going to have to establish cordial relations with them. Beadles are human  beings, after all, and human beings are perfectly capable of screwing over each other in subtle ways. If your beadle is pissed off at you, perhaps he or she could suddenly and inexplicably be unable to be contacted just when you need a copy of that essay you’re supposed to read (and there’s a quiz tomorrow.)

There’s also the much less

malicious but also very real risk of your beadle simply forgetting about you, especially if you’re in the aforementioned class of 100 people. Thus, a cardinal rule is to make sure the beadle remembers  you, even if you sit way at the back and your professor doesn’t know   you exist. That way, you can ensure your firm entrenchment into the line of communication that exists between the beadle and the

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professor. Make sure the beadle has your contact information and that you have theirs, so that you don’t wake up at 5:30 in the morning to go to a 7:30 AM class only to find out that the professor announced a free cut – through the beadle. It’s the minimum requirement for survival. Still, though, don’t depend on your beadle for absolutely  everything. Beadles are human beings, after all, and human beings are also perfectly capable of becoming lazy and incompetent. The class beadle system was established to ensure that every class would have a means of representation to their professor, but don’t hesitate to demand that your professor be up to standard as well. If your  beadle is too spineless to challenge a professor’s edict, for example, or to correct an obvious mistake, take it upon yourself to defend your own rights. It’s not part of the beadle’s job description to look out for the class more than is necessary, so you’ve got the right to complain about the beadle or to take matters into your own hands. It’s every  student’s right, for example, to know exactly how they’re being graded, as well as to be informed of exams at least a week in advance.  Ateneo’s Magna Carta of Undergraduate Student Rights is available for perusal online, and your professors must comply with its provisions.   After all, there’s no sense in complaining about how  professor X doesn’t care about his students if even the students don’t care about the students.

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 V

I D A

C

R U Z

T HINGS  I W ISH  I’  D  K NOWN BEFORE  E NTERING C OLLEGE  5

1 It’s okay to look and feel like a friendless loser on the first day…and the next…and the next. You don’t really find a (oftentimes temporary) niche until after a week or so. In s ome cases, you don’t find a group of  people you feel really comfortable around until half the year is up.

2 It is definitely not the end of the world if ever you do not pass the auditions of the org you’ve been psyching yourself to get accepted into. In fact, you may find your rejection to be a good thing, something that will lead you to something better.

3 9 cases out of 10 say that you don’t get through your freshman year  without developing a happy/serious/whatever crush on at least one classmate/blockmate/batchmate/upperclassman/teacher—at

least

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once. Don’t be alarmed; in most cases, it’s the hormones talking. You still have three other years to go, so don’t you worry your pretty little head.

4 It always pays to have an upperclassman for a friend—they’ll show    you around, possibly lend you their old textbooks, recommend the most ideal professors, and train you into becoming their replacements should you become their deputies in your respective orgs.

5 Be careful with the things you say, the things you do. If you don’t know how to laugh at yourself, you’ll die of embarrassment upon reading your booboo on the Facebok page, Overheard at the Ateneo (where no one discriminates regarding whose fail or win moment they shall post, be it teacher or student or Father Nebres).

6 If you thought high school was full of drama, you may have yet to discover the deeper meaning of the word. The drama of college is a different drama altogether, and you’ll find yourself needing more load, Kleenex, alcohol, and a listening ear.

7 The allowance your parents doled out for you in high school is no longer enough to sustain you for three days straight in college (and that’s taking into account the food prices in the various eating places in and outside campus, photocopy fees, commuting fare, the price of  school supplies and various books, t-shirts, and yada yada yada…)

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8   Along those lines, maybe it’s time to open an ATM account, if you don’t already have one.

9  You can never be too prepared in this heat. Bring a hat or shades or an umbrella, and slather on some sun block—mosquito repellant and a jacket during the rainy season.

10 If you’re a slippers-wearing sort of person, it may be best to pack an extra pair of  actual shoes—especially if you’re going to the Library. If  that proves too troublesome, invest in a pair of comfortable closed shoes that you can slip in and out of.

11 If you didn’t have an e-mail address before entering college, believe me, you’re not gonna be able to survive the year without one now. Some teachers tend to send readings and other homework through email and/or via yahoogroups. If you already have one you’ve been using faithfully since perhaps the seventh grade, you may want to consider making a newer, more professional-sounding one if reading   your e-mail address aloud makes you wince and wish to beat your  younger self for believing in your own “cleverness”.

12 Photocopies exhibit both saving and damning qualities. Set aside a certain portion of your allowance for the little devils, and perhaps  just a bit more for binding fees or a s turdy clear file.

13

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There are three types of cats on campus: the ones who allow you to pet them, the ones who come closer when you have food on you, and the ones you do not touch unless you get a strange satisfaction out of  pouring disinfectant onto your bleeding hand. Know which is which, and refrain from mistreating t hem.

14  Whether you get a very good random number or not, take your online enlistment seriously and choose to pay online if you can. The lines for manual registration and tuition payment are a hassle.

15 In lieu of the last item, timing is everything: the cafeteria and JSEC are especially crowded during breaks. Consider eating lunch early, outside, or buying something you can carry out of such places to be eaten on a nearby bench.

16 Fads catch on quickly—especially online games. They go in and out of  season, and they serve as the marker as to whether you still have a life or not. (Three words: Robot Unicorn Attack.)

17 It is totally un-cool to fangirl/fanboy over well-known personas that pass you by in the hallway. But if your inner fan is absolutely  unstoppable and positively bursting with kilig, do your thing once such personas are out of earshot.

18   You might turn out to be one of those people who managed not to repeat an outfit during the first semester. That’s perfectly fine—

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applause for you, as our closets have finite supplies. Bu t come second sem, you won’t care so much: you’ll start coming in whatever strikes   you as more comfortable than cool (or whatever you happen to get  your hands on first thing in the morning).

19   All the school plays or movies you intend to watch are staged in the afternoon or at night. Make sure you’ve enough for dinner and the ride home, or else that you’ve warned whoever is picking you up that  you’re going home a little later than usual. And time your departure around thirty minutes after the supposed end time of the play or movie.

20 Recweek is your opportunity to get into a lot of orgs. Don’t let such an opportunity pass you by. There’s bound to be one to suit your interests, accredited or unaccredited; it’s also a chance to be a part of  a

close-knit

community

of

people

 weird/geeky/emo/yourself with (read: family).

5

you

can

be

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 M I G U E L

L L O N A

A LETTER TO THE  R IZAL LIBRARY 

 Dear Rizal Library, Is it pointless for me to introduce myself?   You may not remember me anyway, not with the sheer number of people who visit you every day (except on Sundays, when   you zone out and take a well-deserved break. Everyone needs their own space, I understand). Even though I’ve enjoyed your company  since my freshman year, I’m pretty sure I’m just another face to you, nameless and forgettable like all the rest. Really, how can you forget me But I’m not sulking or anything. I must say, you’ve grown larger since I last saw you. A year ago, you only had three floors, but now -- you have five! You even have that stylish little pond near your entrance where students hang out now. But I know that despite all these, you haven’t really changed-- which is something I’m thankful for. But enough with these banalities, I’ll get right to the point. The reason I’m writing you this letter is to remind you that it’s the start of another school year, and there’s going to be a horde of  freshmen who are going to be scrambling before you, whether they 

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need to research something or just want to hang out on one of your desks. The university can be so overwhelming when you’re a freshman, you know. There’s always the danger of finding yourself  lost inside the campus, not being able to find a tambayan, or feeling overwhelmed by the academic workload. It’s all a matter of  adjustment for this new crop of Ateneans, not to mention rising up to the challenges posed by the university. I myself was a freshman once, and I went through the same obstacles that these new blood will face now, especially on the academic workload part. And that’s where you came in, and man, you were a big help. Remember when I was supposed to do my research paper for English 12? You might not, but I’ll tell you anyway. For some reason, I chose nuclear weapons as my topic, when the only thing I knew  about them was that they made me fear for my life on a daily basis. I mean, that would have been a sure F for me, if it wasn’t for you. You know those computers with the OPAC system, lined up against your  walls in groups of four? Of course you know them, why am I They’re life savers. I just typed nuclear weapons in the search box and when the screen flashed me the results, I almost fell to my knees in tears and exaltation. The OPAC gave me a list of all the books I needed. It made research so much easier, and I went home singing centuries’  worth of praises, so exultant that your cheeks would have reddened if   you heard even a fraction of it. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But I can picture a number of  freshmen doing something like that. After all, you’re way too valuable for us Ateneans with all your books, with searching for them made easier by your OPAC computers. (Oh, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: me and a friend of  mine once managed to surf the Internet in one of your OPAC computers. Don’t ask me how we did it, because I’ve forgotten how  and it happened a long time ago anyway. But don’t tell anyone!)

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  And anyway, that was a terrible thing to do. The OPAC computers aren’t meant for browsing the web--you provide other computers for that. In fact, I’m glad you’ve got more of them now. Before your renovation, you only had two rows of computers on the first floor. Now, you’ve stockpiled quite a number in the Info Commons of the third and fourth floors. Now that there are more of  them, people won’t have to worry about running out of computers   where they can check their Facebook do Internet research for their papers and stuff. I mean, sure, most of the students who use your computers  just browse their favorite sites and watch videos to pass the time, the same way that most of them go to you just to get some shuteye. I myself do that. I even smuggle a small pillow in sometimes, because  your desks aren’t very comfortable, mind you. Don’t hate me for it. I hope you understand, because you know how much schoolwork our crazy profs the university dumps on us poor Ateneans, and we could only take so much. Sometimes we have to sleep the stress off, and it’s quiet when we’re with you, not to mention the air conditioning, so  yeah. I also hope that these freshmen will also abide by that dress code you implemented a few years back. I see that you even have a sign right outside the front door now, with pictures of what people shouldn’t be wearing when they come to visit you. There are quite a lot of forbidden articles of clothing in that sign, from flip-flops, minishorts, see-through shirts…basically anything that makes you look  like you’re headed to the beach.  And hey, can I make a confession?   When you implemented that dress code a few years back, I kind of hated you for it. I didn’t see the point of that dress code. In fact, it was so useless it gave new meanings to the word ‘stupid’ So  what if we arrived in slippers and shorts? The world wouldn’t end.

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But that’s what I thought back then. Now, I kind of  understand the point of it. We are Ateneans—we must exude class and sophistication, and wearing slippers apparently doesn't equal to class and sophistication. (And I knew you must have grown tired of  seeing all those rotting dead toenails peeking out of slipper straps.) Go ahead, admit it. But yeah, we're cool now. I'm okay donning some sneakers   when paying you a visit. And I hope none of the freshmen whine about losing their freedom of self-expression through their clothing, or whatever. Since I’ll be staying for one more year, I’ll still be paying you a visit, even if I've visited you a million times before and you still don't remember me. I miss swiping my ID at the entrance, smiling at the guards and the ladies behind the reception desk, and joining all those bibliophiles in perusing the books on your shelves. After all,  without your help, I wouldn’t have been able to survive college. Be seeing you soon!  A frequent visitor

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 R 

A I

V I L L A N U E V A

S AILING T HROUGH  5

I.  W IND

IS KNOWN

to be fickle, capricious, coming and going as it

pleases.   We could never learn to control it, even if, at times, human lives depended on it. Oh, we could use the wind, we could let it cool us, dry us, move us. In the past, sailors prayed to summon wind:  begged their gods, clamored over superstitions; searched the sky in fear, in dread, in wonder. But the sea winds are no man’s slave. No captain simply commands the wind to feed his sails.  Ideas are similar to this sea wind-- as fickle, as astonishing and as unbound to any use of force. Ideas come and go a s they please. They blow into the little windows of our mind, calling us, whispering solutions that have yet to meet a problem. Ideas visit when you least expect them, regardless as to whether or not they are needed. For instance: you are in bed waiting for sleep to take you   when you think up a business venture, a movie, a game design, a script, a study, a topic proposal, a book. This idea interests you greatly. It can be successful, you think to yourself, so you play with these ideas in your head for a moment, amuse yourself with details

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and tidbits, recreate moments about living them out… and before you know it, you fall asleep, sailing into y our dreams. But when you wake in the morning, the night magic is gone.   You tell yourself that you have no need  for these "ideas" anyway. They were fancies, whims, wishes. You tell yourself that because your ideas came at a time when you didn’t need them, they aren’t that important.  And then you do them the greatest wrong: you forget them. In college, ideas form the foundation of month-long projects, painstaking theses, and hour-long defenses. You are not simply  answering to a curriculum as you did in high school, ( true or false, is   four the square root of two? ) but rather, you apply what you have learned (how does this matter at all t o you anyway? ).   You'll swim in your ideas in order to mold them into something tangible: new material. Your ideas become the basis not only of your letter grade but of what kind of professional you choose to be, what you will specialize in and interest you in the future, what  will make you grow. Projects, papers, literature plays, theses, portfolios— there isn’t a way to cruise through these next four or five years without the use of ideas, most especially your ideas. Know your ideas. Let them whisper in your ear. Love them. II. For the sailors of the past, wind was what made their voyage run smoothly, or run at all. It was regarded as something completely  necessary, infinitely valuable. For the college student, ideas are the same. They are what make your voyage run. They are necessary, infinitely valuable. Let me give you some advice, then: when you have an idea,  be sure to capture it, hold onto it, with the hope of making it a reality.

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Trap it into your little post-it notes, encapsulate them with details, plan it with friends. It doesn’t matter if your idea seems silly, or a complete waste of intellectual space—it’s much easier nurturing your ideas than mourning over their dead potential. III. One small sigh of ocean wind will not bring a Viking vessel onto Germanic shores. Similarly, one frail idea will not bring a college student to the front doors of a corporate empire. We can’t rely on that tiny wisp of an idea alone. We have to make this idea great. Of course, there is no apt formula for transforming anything into something great. And as what many professors will tell you, a great idea will not be realized at once. It requires an inconceivable amount of work, oftentimes a dose of dreaming; even a few swings to and from despair. You will have to remap, re-plan. Turn the design upside-down, inside-out, or mirror them with Photoshop magic (  Image > Image Rotation > Flip Horizontal). You will have to reword, rethink, reformulate each and every aspect of your idea. Some parts (sometimes the parts you love the most) will have to be chopped off. There is no one way to truly learn the delicate art of refining,   but with practice one can grow to be quicker, sharper, more experienced. As you go through the flurry of topic proposals and paper revisions, one can grow to minimize common mistakes and find a suitable remedy to any disaster. Be your own faithful critic. Soon, you will learn to ask yourself, why does this need to be done?  or how will I make that happen? and why do I present it this way?  what am I trying to say, what am I trying to accomplish?  You will astonish yourself with what you can fish out from the most basic of  questions. Your new best mates will be the words what and why and how and if you love your project, you will end up loving these words as well.

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IV. Four hundred or so years ago, sailors had to check on a million things  before a voyage. The sails on the mast had to be up and secure, the rigging had to be set to complement the temper of the wind. All hands were accounted for, and they had to know for sure that there   was enough ale and barrels of potatoes in the galley; that all route plans were refined by the captain, the patron, the navigator; that the night sky was clear and promising and that the stars told of a favorable journey. That there was no female stowaway lurking below, and that every sharpened rigging knife was prepared to cut the sails down before a storm. College life can batter any number of ships, and a weak ship   will be the first to go. You must be sure that your ship is sturdy to forge on-- each of your ideas sturdy and secure. In order for an idea to fully develop, one has to take down every single detail of that idea. There will always be a large amount of  planning involved in any route you wish to take, and quite another amount of maneuvering to get what you want done. It would be difficult at first, especially if you haven’t been on your own before.   You will encounter questions like Where do you bind or laminate your notes, your schedules? Where does one print an ad forty-two inches wide? Where do you get tables and graphs of hardcore research and information that isn't found in the library? How will  you edit that raw video you took for the pr esentation?  Find these places, look around, ask around. Those answers can be answered by older students, or perhaps a professor can point  you to the right direction. But no matter how many answers you can glean from any article or from an older friend-- the most important process in college is to go through them yourself. Brave through the storm, sail out of your comfort zone and don't give a worried glance  back towards the dock.

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Find the strength to obtain all the things you need for your idea. Wrap the voyage around your finger. The more details you place and the more resources you gather, the more certainty you will obtain, and the more likely your idea will push through.  V. Not all voyages run as smoothly as the captain initially hopes. Similarly, college is not all about furnishing your ideas exactly as you picture it. Aside from being vivid dreamers and damn strong getgoers, we must also know how to k eep our feet planted on the boat. The world will always be an uncertain place. It has the temper of a mysterious ocean rocking ships back and forth. It can mislead you and spit on you with its salty disdain. Along your voyage  you will meet storms and rocks, perhaps even pirates. Problems like: schedule conflicts, surprise announcements, financial insecurity, logistic conundrums. Perhaps the material you want to buy is not in stock, or the venue has been moved into a classroom with no projector, or suddenly the lead actress of your play needs to go to an important reunion. There will be times when your idea will not push through. There will be times when not everything will go according to plan. Sailors of the past were never assured of wind blowing in their favor, and in the same way, we are never assured that any of our ideas, any of our projects will work. We won’t know if our professors   will love our project proposals, our lit plays, our theses. We won't know if the photocopiers will close the instant we need them most, or that our project remains unclear and incomplete even as the deadline nears.  As a last piece of advice, I believe each and every apt sailor should learn when to abandon ship. One doesn't have to jump off  immediately—if one has to refashion his or her work in order to make ends meet, then one should. Oftentimes we think too lovingly of our

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plans that we forget to see that there is still space to improve, a detail to fix, something to build on. Revisions can save the day. But I'm afraid not all ideas are worth saving. Having the foresight to recognize the signs and notice that your idea is sinking may save you from nights in anguish and a really hard time in class.  You can love your project all you want, and it will be hard to watch an idea die, but you will not be the only judge of that work. Things will not always work out exactly as you had imagined, and sometimes, that's better. When one idea doesn't get through, it means that the next idea might. Love your ideas, but make room for   better ones. Growth is limitless, so long as you have the grace and capacity to understand when it is time to let go of an old idea, and reach out to capture a fresh one. 5

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 H E I N Z

L A W R E N C E

A N G

T HE  U LTIMATE (-ISH  ) G UIDE TO   D OMINATING THE   D EAN ’ S  LIST  5

On high grades and bragging rights credentials  Your parents and teachers have probably told you that getting high grades is not important, and what matters is that you’re a good person. Ha-ha! Oh, alright, alright. So the above statement is indicative of a sound values system – in the end, you probably should be more concerned with your immortal soul. However, no one can deny that this valley of tears is also the valley of the practical day-to-day  concerns. The most basic concern, of course, is procuring food. In this economical society, the way to procure food is to get a job. The  better the job, the more secure your food supply is. And how does one get a good job? Through a résumé.   Which, of course, is usually bolstered by – who knew? – high grades.

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In a word, high grades, though not essential to your being, are nonetheless important if you want to survive and succeed in this dog-eat-dog world. In a sense, all students know this. Even your high school bum buddies would want  to be in the honor roll, though they  strive not for it. And as Ateneans, you probably have a sharper grasp of what high grades can do for you: perhaps you have been in the top ten of your class at least once in your life. Your parents would most probably have given you all the good books and the good tutors. Or, if   you’re a scholar, then you probably do not need this guide at all!   You are wondering: what nerve this guy has! How dare he lecture us on high grades! And my response? Well, you would have a fair point. I’m no ‘straight-A, all the way!’ student. But I have  been into the Dean’s List. A lot. The only times I have not   been in the list  were in my first freshman semester and my first junior year se mester. Last semester I was 3.86, and I am now a senior with a cumulative QPI of 3.49. Do I have a life, though? Maybe I am some sort of robot or a creep who returns to the earth after class hours. Don’t worry. I’m not. I have only one org, true, and I am not a big barkada kind of guy. But on a typical weekend I spend 8 hours on the Internet (5 hours spent on MMORPG games, and 3 on Sims 2 sites), 3 hours watching TV , and 8 hours asleep. Take away an hour for all my big meals and that leaves me, what, 4 hours to stud y? But hey, Dean’s List. Now, how the heck do I – or you, for that matter – do that? This is the DL life… or is this?   You might think that the Dean’s Lister has it all good. You have   bragging rights. You can pwn your stoopider classmates with that nice and shiny 3.35. You have unlimited cuts, which of course entitles  you to time better spent in Him5 computer café and/or chilling with

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  buddies in one of the Katips bars. And, in case of international turmoil, you have free access to the secret nuclear bomb shelter in the conspicuously extraterrestrial Faura Hall. Okay, so maybe the last one is just a myth. But in truth all of  these so-called privileges are lies, anyway. You may be in the DL, but, for sure, there always is someone out there smarter than you, and that someone will, sooner or later, knock the hot air out of your inflated head. Also, the much-envied ‘infinite cuts’ privilege is good for nothing if you want to maintain your DL status: proper Dean’s Listers, after all, have to go to class every time to update their knowledge, submit their homework, recite, and so on. At best, the ‘infinite cuts’ only translate to ‘infinite lates’ – and the non-DLister could simply sleep and wake up half an hour earlier to keep up with the class sched. So what’s the point of being a Dean’s Li ster? In the short term, nothing much. But the ‘A student’ knows that he or she must look ahead. Far ahead, even to the world that lies after college: the work desk in a chic office with polished glass panes overlooking the Makati or Ortigas skyline. This foresight, I believe, is what differentiates the true Dean’s Lister from the half-hearted wannabe who only spends the rest of his academic life daydreaming of all the benefits he could reap as a DLister: the infinite cuts, the distinction, the secret Faura Hall lounge, etc. And come to think of it, this is perhaps the very reason  why the latter sort does not  make it into the DL. He does not know   what truly is at stake, so he just lays back, loses his desire and ambition, and lets things by. Especially when he realizes that studying daily, listening to droning professors, staying stuck for hours in the library, and cutting up on Facebook time is so hard. To make it into the List, the college student must first and foremost possess and express the correct desire, the correct will  to succeed. Thinking of short-term benefits like free cuts would not sustain a

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constant drive; only a foresighted view of future possibilities would.   And from there flows all the temperance, the tenacity, and the temerity needed to make it i nto the top. The Learning Attitude So loving what you do – in this case, getting into the Dean’s List – is important. This means you’re one-thirds done, and you’ve graduated past the hardest part. But definitely not the most tiring, boring, and repetitive part: how the heck do I get there?   When you were in elementary and/or high school, your teachers probably invited you to raise your hands when you know the answer, and to voice your opinions (when you don’t want to) and ask  questions (when you feel you don’t have to). The said teachers, I’m sure, also made you read a lot of boring books that have no relevance to your future: the  Noli, El Fili, and The Cask of Amontillado, along  with   Modern Concepts in Chemistry and the   Introduction to  Intermediate Algebra. Icky, right? It all seemed thoroughly pointless back then. Even now, you might still think so. But what the teacher was really trying to do was to instill in you a love for knowledge and learning,  which is in fact the best – and only reliable – road toward Honor Roll/Dean’s List domination.  When I was little, I did not want to eat my vegetables. I hated ampalaya (the bitter green gourd) most of all. However, my parents   were able to convince me that I should eat the said veggie, and so successful were they that ampalaya is now one of my favorite dishes, especially when served with beef or with scrambled egg. How did they achieve that? Simple. They strapped me down and shoved ampalaya down my  throat. Things are the same with learning. Some people are born naturally curious and thirsty for k nowledge; others simply aren’t. For

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the latter, the love for learning and knowledge must come as an acquired taste if they are to have any chance of making it into the Dean’s List. And the best exercise, the best way of encouraging this love for knowledge, is found in the classroom routine: Sit down. Recite. Ask questions. Take down notes. Do homework. Read. Read. Read.  And here’s the reasoning behind the routine – sitting down promotes discipline. Reciting encourages both the selfless sharing of  ideas and the ability to re-present information in one’s own words (a sign of having dwelt upon the thought overnight). Asking questions lead to a critical and open mind. Taking down notes represents  valuing knowledge and preserving it; doing homework is a prelude to submitting findings, insights, and discoveries to the academic community. And reading, leafing through hundreds and thousands of  pages, is the journey and pursuit of knowledge in its naked form: searching the archives and the traditions of the entire human experience to come up with ideas and innovations that would change the world – hopefully for the better. Somehow all that high school routine begins to make some sense. Math is my forte (aka playing to strengths)   You must have felt, as I did, that in elementary and high school certain subjects just did not seem so appealing. For me, Physical and Health Education sucked. Chemistry was a bore. Math was so-so. Physics was okay. Religion and Economics were intriguing. Filipino and English were interesting. And History was fascinating. Of course,  you would have a completely different view of all the subjects – and  that’s okay. Flunking History does not necessarily mean you’re stupid. It may just signify that you’re plainly not meant for it . In real life, the Renaissance Man who loves all fields of  knowledge and practices all crafts is a rarity, a bizarre phenomenon,

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a genius. (And genius, it is said, comes only once in a generation of  millions.) The regular person would either be extremely talented in one to four fields and poor in the rest. And come to think of it, this is how things are meant to be: Dr. Rizal, our most renowned and (aptly  or inaptly) admired national hero, once pointed out that not everyone can and should be a doctor or a lawyer – for who would tend the fields? Or compute all our au dits and credits? In the academe, one might think that he or she must excel in all subjects to be included in the Dean’s List. I say: go ahead, if you can. Certain people do have biases against certain subj ects and, more often than not, find obstacles along the way. Here’s a simplified scenario: Student A has T heology and Economics, both equal to three units. She dislikes Economics but loves Theology. Would it be prudent for her to exert 50% effort on Eco and 50% effort on Theo? Definitely not, as, given her predisposition towards Theo, the fruits of  her labors would still be unequal – and effort better placed to increase her Theo grade from, say, B to A had been spent making her Eco grade from C into a C+. The trick, then, is to use 100% effort as you   play to your  strengths – but without utterly sacrificing the other fields such that  you get an A(+++) in Math and Fs in English, Filipino, and NatSci. Remember that all effort to increase an A into something like an  A+++++ is in vain, so why spend all effort in something you can still excel at without all of your energies? Conversely, why spend all effort in NatSci when your heart lies in Filipino?   Aristotle once said that the good lies in the mean, the  balance, of things, and not in its excess. In the case of high grades, this truism holds true: the Dean’s Lister knows where to allocate his energies. Not that he or she puts equal effort to all the subjects – unless he or she is uncommonly good and interested with all these; rather, he or she plays to his or her strengths, but keeps enough sense to pass the other subjects.

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 And the high grades will start kicking in. Early to bed... and other good h abits  A popular misconception of college life is that students are required  to drink gallons of coffee, smoke a field of weed, and spend the entire evening awake typing term papers and researching. And the sad thing is all that punishment leads only to an average C to C+ performance. If you truly want to be in the DL (or so Hollywood says), you have to hang around in the library 24/7, wear rimmed glasses, have braces,  join the chess club, and watch innumerable sci-fi shows. Riiiiight. Dean’s Listers usually lead a more or less normal (and by  normal I mean in-erratic) existence. Sure, maybe some of their favorite chat topics are Paul Ricoeur and the state of Philippine politics, but they also eat at McDo or Flaming Wings, laugh at jokes, support either the Lakers or the Celtics, and maintain active Facebook accounts. In fact, this normality of existence is the very reason why they are in the DL. Dean’s Listers, first and foremost, live a life of good habits.   We all know what thee good habits are: sleep early, sleep eight hours a day, eat three meals (plus merienda), refrain from smoking, keep coffee to a minimum, and so on. The idea is to keep the body in tip-top shape for school. Remember that we, as  Homo sapiens – wise human being – are minds as well as bodies: to deny  the body is to deny the mind. How do you expect to think clearly and   brilliantly when your brain is deprived of glucose, or your eyelids heavy with drowsiness? How would you attend classes when you’re struck with pneumonia? How would you read for your r esearch paper  when your eyes are blinded by ten hours’ worth of UV radiation and glare courtesy of DOTA? Of course, DListers are not perfect human beings: they stray  from the healthy path from time to time. I use the Net three hours

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more than I should (and seven more than my parents think I should). I skip lunch at times so as to save money. But the one advantage DListers have is that, for the most part, they  keep to their good  habits. I am proud to say that I usually sleep at 10am and wake up at 5 to 6 in the morning. Consequently, I am a morning person – and I am able to grasp Eco and Histo and Psych while many of my peers still doze off. I get to recite, to listen, to take down notes. I have no more need to cram. And, then, poof, I’m in the Dean’s List. Much of  my success (and sanity) hinges upon my seven to eight hours of sleep.   Another important good habit to learn is proper scheduling. Perhaps your college friends have told you that you need to learn how  to cram in order to survive the Ateneo. Discard all such advice; the last-minute, last-ditch effort you put into a project cannot but show  in the rushed and formless output. My personal approach is to sketch a plan right after the project is announced, schedule when to do my  research, and do the manual work three or so days before the deadline. That way, I work according to my own pace, and I can sit  back and relax as I watch my classmates stress themselves out over a project I practically breezed through.  And with good habits, you can snag a B+ or an A, too. Exam skillz: or, how do I make the orals? Most people dread the exams; DListers usually do, too. Oral exams pressure students to say something intelligent – a problem for the timid personality. Long essay tests are a pain for slow workers. And objective tests are a cross for those with bad memory. There are certain skills, however, that enable good students to get past through the terror of the exa ms. Dean’s Listers know these skills well, and this knowledge often enables them to calm down three to two days before the so-called Hell Week. (Contrary to popular belief it is the week before Hell Week that punishes students most. Requirements, projects… but I digress.)

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But what are these skills? Much has already been said elsewhere about proper note-taking, memorization, computation, and so on – a good source is Veltisezar Bautista’s   Improve Your  Grades: A Practical Guide to Academic Excellence – and the good student already knows these things, or has discarded these guidelines for their own working study systems. But here are some generally  successful ‘cheat codes’ for long tests and oral exams. (Bear in mind, though, that the following techniques are my own personal approach.   You may have your own system, and that may be just as effective as mine. Try my method if you wish.) Long tests come in two varieties: an objective type, or an essay type. (The former may include an essay question, but the one in the latter is usually more in-depth.) Objective tests are quite straightforward: straightforward: these gauge ‘only’ the student’s grasp and k nowledge of the subject matter. Memory would then be your best friend in this kind of tests, and usually memory alone does suffice. Essay tests, however, are much different. These do not only gauge your stocked knowledge – more often than not, these ask you to synthesize what synthesize  what   you insights you have gained from the required readings with your own thoughts and ideas. Tall order, huh? Three things matter in an essay type test: raw insight, support from the text, and thought organization. The first is derived from all the hours spent in class, all the hours spent reading and studying. The second is the necessary back-up, the necessary  ‘evidence’ to the idea you have formulated – and this back-up is none other than the text itself. And the third refers to the clarity of the flow  of ideas, the proper arrangement of primary and secondary themes, and so on. Example question: What reality of life does one see in Homer’s Odyssey?    A poor student would immediately panic and scramble for his reading material, looking for a plain bright-as-day answer. A 

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slightly better one would start off right away, penning away his own half-baked thoughts ( that may or may not have any basis on the text). But a good student would first stop and reflect on whatever things were discussed in class. She would remember that the themes of identity, home and homecoming, and culture were prevalent in the entire epic. From these themes she would make connections. Isn’t it a person’s duty to discover his or her identity? And where is identity  forged? At home. But can an identity spring forth fully formed? No. The search for identity is a journey: a journey home. Only then and there will the good student bring out her readings. And she brings them out not to find the answer  per se, but se,  but to support her own carefully constructed answer. She would p oint out the necessary evidence – Telemachus’ search for his fat her (indicative of his own quest for identity), Odysseus’ constant hiding of identity  (he is not himself   himself   yet, for he is in foreign lands, far away from his culture, his home) – and cite the proper passages, the proper line numbers, the proper chapters. And her thesis will run thus: Greek  notion of home and identity -> search for identity = journey home -> identity = home  With the proper synthesis of ideas (yours and the text’s!), the proper citation of sources, and the proper organization of thought, an  A is almost assured. Now, oral exams follow almost the same format as the long test. There is a difference, however: cheat sheets and readings are usually not allowed when taking an oral exam. This is where a proper study schedule comes in. A poor student would cram the day before her oral exams, trying to read the entire thing and absorb all information. And the exam day would find her spewing raw  information out senselessly, often not answering the question at all.   A slightly better student would also cram, but, knowing  better than to just spew information, he would try and get the right details into the fray. Having crammed knowledge, knowledge, however, he would

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sooner or later forget some crucial details. The student would stutter. He would pause and make delaying statements. (Or, worse, make prolonged ‘ummm’ ‘ummm’ sounds.) A nd then he would crash and burn. The way to beat the dreaded orals is to read the text days  before the exam. Professors would usually announce a list of possible questions at about the same time. What you should do is to break the long-winded questions down to its basic components, the basic subquestions. From there, get an index card per question answer the  basic sub-questions one by one and in an organized flow, citing the text where necessary. When you have answered all the questions, start reviewing all of them one by one, remembering the organization and the key words. words. In the above example, my  organization and key words would be: Home-> oikos (Gk. house)-> house)-> family, store of goods-> defines person-> identity  Telemachus Telemachus > father away from Ithaca-> Ithaca-> no father figure -> lack of identity  Odysseus-> away from oikos, in foreign lands-> alien-> disguise to adapt-> change of identity  Journey: Telemachus to Nestor, Menelaus: inquire about father Odysseus: test of hospitality-> supplication-> Greek culture > searching for ‘Greece-home’ Resolution: Ithaca -> Odysseus returns home, restores order> return to ‘normalcy’-> identity reassured >Telemachus meets father, sees home restored -> identity forged By remembering the key words and the organization, the good student stands a good chance of doing well in the dreaded oral exams. Dean’s Lister: connecting subjects

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 Any student can memorize. Any student can take one field and excel in it. But the Dean’s Lister does one thing further: he can synthesize ideas from different subjects, as well. He can make connections. One would notice that names like Immanuel Kant, Emmanuel Levinas, and Lao Tze often crop up in more subjects than one: history, philosophy, theology, and so on. Why? This is, because, as said in the Acts, “all this was not done in a corner” (Act 26:26). The Cartesian Plane was the child of Descartes’ philosophy that all material things are measurable: they have extension (X) and motion (Y). Marx’s ideal of a classless society had ramifications in Economics (the control economy), Politics (Socialism and the extreme Left), Philosophy (class struggle, man’s economic nature), and History  (Soviet Russia, Maoist China). True knowledge – the one that leads to true insight, true   wisdom

–

is

something

that

cannot

and

should

not

be

compartmentalized per subject, taken in isolation. And the Dean’s Lister, driven by the desire to learn, will pursue the threads binding the concepts together and, in class as well as in real life, point these associations out, bringing a newer and more fruitful dimension into the discussion.   A word of caution, however: this does not  mean that you should, like some idle browser in Wikipedia, click every clickable link  and follow every connection: that would make you crazy. As I said earlier, the Dean’s Lister should have the foresight necessary to discern which concept is related to which. For example, in a History  class, one doesn’t just go about discussing Marxist literary theory  (“seeing outside the box, inspecting the circumstances that led to the creation of the literary work”). While, yes, Marx’ ideas did filter into the creative writing world, it has very little to do with Chairman Mao’s forcing the Chinese intellectuals to work in the fields. In this case, Literature and History just doesn’t mix. And the DLister knows  better than to force such a relationship.

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How, then, does one know  what links to follow, and what not  to? Why, of course, through reading. And reading.  And reading. Not only does a book provide knowledge; the discipline of sitting down quietly and reading a book develops good qualities: the sheer length and exhaustive nature of a book develops in the reader patience, proper digestion of information, detailed analysis and critical thinking, things that random clicking in Wikipedia just does not and cannot deliver. (No offense to Wiki. I love all the things I get there, and I use Wiki now to find quick answers to quick questions. But if I   want a thorough discussion of an idea, I would still prefer conventional readings.) It has been said that those who get the high grades are usually the avid readers. One can make a case out of certain honor roll high school students who have not yet read, cumulatively, something thicker than the  Anna Karenina. But I think it’s a harder route to prove that people who have read more than five thousand pages cannot be Dean’s Listers. ‘Oops! I… failed?’  Armed to the teeth with all the great advice an d tips presented in this guide, any driven and studious student would be very likely to get that coveted DL spot. However, there is no 100% guarantee of  success, just as there is no hard and fast rule to DL-dom. (Hence, this guide is not an Ultimate, but an Ultimate-ish one.) It’s a slim chance,  but there remains a possibility that you fail to make the 3.35 QPI. Oops?  What, then, is to be done? Should you fly your way to the old Social Science Building and raze the Registrar to the ground? Should  you complain to the profs until their ears come off? Maybe. But should you give up trying?  No.

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Let me recount some of my own experience. I began my  second year in college one week later than usual. I came from a   vacation abroad, and I was a little behind than my classmates. Did that stop me from getting the DL spot then? No. The next semester, I forgot to submit my contribution for an  Aesthetics project. That was one chunk of a grade taken away from me. But did that stop me from studying my Baroque a nd Rococo? No. First sem, third year. I had tough Histo and Theo professors. (Or subjects, depending on the way you look at it.) I was surprised to see my C+ Histo long test grades when Philippine History was supposed to be my niche. My Theo long tests were disappointments, too. I failed to snag the DL spot that semester. But did that stop me from regaining DL grace the next se mester? Heck no. So when you forget to submit one assignment, fail one quiz, get stuck in your sickbed for a week, and/or fail one semester, do not   be discouraged. So what? You have one thousand assignments, five hundred quizzes, and seven more semesters to go. The main thing is that you keep your eyes on the prize and shoulder on.  And then, sooner or later, the Dean’s List.  And from there, domination.

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 A R N O L D

L A U

F IVE  W ORDS  T HAT   D ON ’ T  M EAN  W HAT  Y OU  T HINK  T HEY  M E AN 

  A TENEANS, like any other group of people lumped together for years, tend to have their own language. We sometimes make up our own  words - you probably will hear new portmanteaus and colloquialisms every once in a while – but we also invest new meaning into words that therefore end up defying the obvious. After months in Ateneo,  you too will understand the nuances behind what people mean when they speak certain words, whereas outside friends may scratch their heads and wonder what the heck you guys are talking about. In this article, I will play grammar (or should I say    vocabulary) Nazi for the meantime, and bring up five words that have, for many Ateneans, taken on a different meaning. Sometimes, these new meanings are harmless and even fun; other times, sticking to the “Atenean meaning” can be detrimental.

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1. Course – We start out mild, with a word whose usage isn’t uniquely Atenean. It’s more a feature of Philippine English. A typical exchange that uses the word course would be like so: “Excuse me, what’s your course?”  “Management. You?”  “Woah, I’m management too! How come we only met just  now?”  “That’s because there are kind of… over 200 of us?”  “Course” here represents what your American exchange friend would call a major , or a degree program, such as BFA Creative  Writing or BS Chemistry. To them, a course is what we would call a subject  – that is, something like English 12 or Psychology 101. In other variants of English, the question “What’s your course?” doesn’t make all that much sense; “what courses are you taking up?” is more likely to be understood. This is not to say that you should start going around referring to your Fil 12 class as a course, because you’ll find it hard to be understood. Philippine English is not a “wrong” kind of English, it’s our kind of English. 2. Prof – Every Atenean knows what a prof, short for  professor , is; they’re those guys and girls who show up at designated times in designated places and may or may not, over the course of at least an hour or so, do one or more of the following: talk rapidly, give a test, assign a paper or reading, scream at somebody, make everyone laugh, open a powerpoint, write something on the board, call on people to recite, or be absent.  While  prof  has come to mean pretty much anyone who teaches a class, teachers who are also professors number very few. One of the requirements for being a professor is a doctorate degree, or a Ph.D, and – especially as a freshman or sophomore student –

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  you’ll probably have lots of teachers who are only just studying for their master’s degrees while teaching at the same ti me.   A doctorate degree, however, isn’t enough to qualify your teacher for a professorship – one must also constantly be publishing research papers, among other tasks, in order to qualify for the highest title in the university hierarchy – which is, simply, “professor.” Each department will probably only have two or three professors at any  given time (some really large departments will have slightly more, of  course.) Lower ranks include “associate professor” and “assistant professor,” and the bulk of your teachers will be either “instructors” or “lecturers.” If your teacher doesn’t tell you in class to address him or her in a particular way (such as “señorita”), then “sir” or “ma’am” are respectful umbrella terms. When talking about your teachers to other students, people will understand “prof.” 3. Load rev  – Freshmen don’t have to worry about this as much,  because most of your classes will already be picked out for you by the powers that be at the Registrar’s Office. Past freshman year, however,   when you can choose a lot more of your classes, there will come a time when you pick out your class schedule and go to sleep, only to realize the next day that you’ve just picked out the worst prof ever (yep, I’m a conformist), or that you have martial arts training at the same time as your German class. Or, perhaps, you were unlucky  enough to get a poor random number, and ended up with a schedule that looks like your dog chewed on it, or a PE class that may result in multiple injuries and lawsuits. Or you’ll simply run out of slots for a class you have to take.  Well, don’t despair – you aren’t totally sunk yet. All you have to do is undergo the load revision process, or loadrev for short. If you need to change your classes, the way to go is via loadrev.

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  Well, yes and no. The load revision process, which is aptly  named because it allows you to revise your course load for the semester, is an epic quest akin to trials you might have read somewhere in Greek Mythology. It requires you, among other things, to head to around seven separate offices all around the campus to get forms signed – and you have to head to those offices in a particular  order . However, not everyone needs to do load revision. Load revision is only necessary for people who want to change their classes after having already paid their tuition. If you’ve already paid your tuition, you make things a lot harder for Ateneo’s accountants and record-keepers, which is why they exact their revenge on you via the loadrev process, which includes asking the cashier to recompute the amount of money you’re supposed to have paid. If, on the other hand, you’ve just completed your online registration and you discover that you’ve made some sort of mistake, or you want to change something, you can actually change your classes via a much easier process if you haven’t paid tuition yet . Simply show up on campus on manual registration day and ask the Registration Committee – composed of students – to help you out. If    you’ve got a really good reason for having to modify your classes, asking the RegCom to help you out – also known as buffer  registration – can get you places that would have been impossible via normal means (such as getting a slot in an already full class, or getting your pick of profs for a particular class.) There’s no sense in   being like Hercules with the loadrev process if you haven’t forked over your money yet. 4. Break – How were your break times in high school? For many of  us, they were probably chances to wind down a bit in between  barrages of information overload and chat with friends while having a snack. Of course, sometimes, breaks may have been necessary in

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order to cram for the next subject, but that kind of thing only  happened on occasion. It’s the same way in college, right? Um, no.  A lot of things depend on how you as a student view breaks. Breaks here are defined as anytime you’re on campus and between classes – but every Atenean knows that breaks will often be anything  but relaxing. Based on how your schedule turns out, you may find yourself  slapped with six hour long breaks. While this initially sounds great – that’s lots of time to go catch a movie, for example – the novelty   wears off really quickly. It’ll come to a point that if you aren’t eating, studying or shooting the breeze, you won’t know what to do with   yourself during a long break. Dormers are slightly luckier, because they have the added option of going back to bed. If you’re involved in extracurricular activities, such as organizations, you’ll be using breaks in order to carry out your duties – such as manning a booth during RecWeek, or lining up to reserve a classroom, or distributing flyers, or meeting with your orgmates. If   you’re the type whose course is AB or BS ORG, then chances are your entire break will be consumed by errands. That’s not to say that org  work isn’t fun, but it isn’t that chill downtime you were looking for, either. Finally, as early as sophomore year you may end up with classes spaced really far apart from each other, such that you go to school at 8:30 in the morning and your last class ends at 9 PM. This  will obviously be punctuated by a seri es of breaks. Now, none of them may reach the epic six-hour break in length, but the question is: if   you go home at 9 PM, what are you going to do with those breaks? If    you’re used to studying for the next day’s classes only when you’re cooped up in your room at home, then you better be prepared for an inevitable dependence on coffee. Alternately, you can – some would say must – use a lot of your break time to study, especially if you have

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a professor who gives readings that when stacked reach up to your  waist. The point is that break times are meant to be used strategically. You’ll get lots of opportunities to hang out with friends and let loose during breaks, but you’ll have to budget the amount of  time you spend doing so. 5. A  – This is the coveted  A , numerically equal in Ateneo to 4.0 (or 1.0 in other universities). It represents the highest pinnacle of  academic achievement, and racking up a bunch of these can get your diploma pimped up with snazzy-sounding Latin honors. A’s go to people who work hard, reasonably understand the course material, go to class every day, etc., and if you didn’t get an A in a certain class, it means you lacked s omething, right? Believe it or not, there are more cases than you think where that isn’t true at all. Professors in Ateneo play largely by their own rules. They’re regulated by a student rights system, so they can’t just do whatever they want (unlike in other universities), but there will still be professors who never, as a rule, give out A’s. Or you may be lucky  enough to get a professor that’s so easy that you can use up all your available cuts, depend on secondhand notes, and still get an A, while  your diligent and slightly nerdy friend struggles just to eke out a C+ and she’s already top of the class. Some professors may set 92 as the cutoff grade for an A; others, for the same subject , will require a 97. Some professors will give you paper after paper and quiz after quiz, as well as grade class participation; others will only give you midterms an d finals. Different professors having different standards means that an A, while impressive on paper and definitely something to aspire for, is in reality also a matter of luck and strategy. If your main goal in college is to rack up straight A’s a nd gain elusive kwatro kid status,

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  you’re going to have to spend as much time researching on professors, gleaning sample tests, and manipulating your schedule as   you do reading or answering problem sets or writing papers or making projects – all to ensure that you end up in a class where the teacher may or may not be effective, but A’s are given out like hotcakes. Getting as high a quality point index (QPI) as possible is definitely attractive, but the reality is that it doesn’t say much about how good a student you are. In high school, you may have been motivated by the phrase “grades don’t matter.” In college, the same rings true – except it’s not just due to abstract principles such as “learning is more important than grades”. While that’s absolutely  true, what you have to realize as early as possible is that the university’s system itself makes grades not matter all that much.  Whether or not you’re going to play the system to chase those A’s, or concentrate on other priorities, is entirely up to you as a student –   but a 4.0 QPI is not always the result of unequivocal genius and persistence. It can get unfair, yes, especially if you’re in a course with a grade cutoff, and your Math professor is pushing you to the limit   while your friend, who’s taking the same course as you, has an easygoing professor who gives lots of bonus points or something. Especially if you don’t make the grade, and your friend does. But hey, life can be unfair. Misunderstanding these words during the course of your   Ateneo life could have highly inconvenient consequences. You may  end up embarrassing yourself at one point of your freshman year   because of these new terminologies that you’re about to encounter and believe me, there are a lot more of these terms (it doesn’t end in  your freshman year!). Though there’s nothing to worry about, this is part of the Ateneo culture. Embrace it.



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 J

A S M I N E

T .

C

R U Z

T O  S HIFT OR N O T TO  S HIFT 

 Best post-grad Moment:  As I was about to leave Ateneo, I saw Sir Tanchoco, and he said to me: "Ikaw ha, when I met you, I let you in M.E., then you went  to Management, and now I found out you graduated Creative Writing!"   Kung alam lang niya, nag-A.B. Psy din ako.  An excessive shifting spree was pretty inevitable given how I started my college life. The seemingly harmless college application should strike some kind of dread once you hit the not so simple course of  study selection. Sadly, fear wasn’t one of my strong points. If you look  at my college applications, you’d think that I'm some brave but completely blind idiot who just randomly filled out those forms. In U.P. Diliman, I had an accrued interest for Business   Administration and Accounting; in UST my patient heart was shot  with desire when it wanted Pharmacy, and in Ateneo i t felt insane not to pick Psychology. What the hell was I thinking? I clearly wasn’t. I thought I was invested in Business Administration and Accounting  because when I was a kid, my cousins and I sold carrot juice outside

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our house, and it seemed fun (especially since we rabidly chased after passersby if they didn’t buy from us). The prescription for Pharmacy  materialized when my mom said, that my lola said, that my tita from the States said that, it really pays well. Unconscious of my own cognitive dissonance, I opted for Psychology because I had a teacher named Ms. Windsor who took up Psychology, and she was smart, and I wanted to be smart. I was naïve. I didn’t know what I wanted in life. I was bound for trouble. The only thing I knew was that I was ambitious. I liked dreaming, and I only liked dreaming big. Unlike kids who wanted to   be a lawyer, I wanted to be a judge, and not just any judge, but the   judge of the Supreme Court. I didn't go through the usual ballet phase; I went through the exceptionally crazed ballet phase where my  little heart exploded with dreams of twirling around in the biggest theaters, putting on elegant costumes, and, most of all, becoming prima ballerina—an official title given to the best ballerinas in the  world. Early on, I knew I wanted the world, and I w anted the world to  want me back. Fast forward to college, I carried my bloated head around the  Ateneo halls thinking that my course would gain me a lot of respect and awe. It was in the corridors of Kostka where I first saw my old high school classmates. I excitedly went to them, and we chitchatted for a while. The crucial moment came—someone asked me what my  course was. I said Psychology and I waited. Waited for that look, that look that people gave me whenever I say something great. Instead they said ah. Then someone asked A.B. or B.S.? I said A.B. Again they  said ah. It wasn’t long until I discovered the Ateneo royalty, and they   were called the SOM (School of Management) students. You always knew when you were in the presence of these blue-blooded beings.

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  White, chinky-eyed, and perfect, they would bring out their silver iPhones and pearly MacBooks, and they would console each other knowing how hard it was to account for their millions. Yet even  within the royalty, there was a hierarchy, and the kings and queens   were the Management Engineering (M.E.) students. Every time people would ask a student what his or her course was, if he or she says

  Management

Engineering, the

crowd’s

eyes

would

instantaneously light up, and mouths would drop open.  Wanting that reaction, I decided to shift to M.E. I went to the Guidance office, which was located at the Social Science building.

The Guidance counselors were kind enough to

guide me through the steps of shifting. The first thing they told me  was to sign up for a shifting workshop. There are limited slots so they  told me to sign up right away. They stressed that missing the  workshop is very risky because there is no guarantee that there will  be available alternative dates. The guidance office had a strict policy: no workshop, no shifting. In the workshop, they made me draw “What do you imagine  yourself to be in fifty years?”, the answer was simple: I drew myself   writing on a desk surrounded by published books entitled “Daughters of Aphrodite by Jasmine Cruz.” When the guidance counselor asked  what course I wanted to shift to, I said  Management Engineering. She looked confused. I also needed to attend departmental talks, which were seminars about different courses. I just attended the SOM talk    because I was only interested in SOM courses. I don't remember much about that talk except that I was very impressed. To know more about the shifting requirements of each course, please feel free to visit our department, the speaker said. So I did. The first time I entered the SOM department, I felt so intimidated. In a scared little   voice, I asked the secretary   Ms. tatanong ko lang po shifting requirements para sa Management Engineering. Like an overly 

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efficient machine recorder, she began to effortlessly spew the answers: the grade requirement, pass a letter explaining why you   want to shift, pass a copy of your grades, pass other necessary  documents that the department thinks is necessary, put it all in a  brown envelope, we will contact you to schedule your interview with the chair. I was also informed that since I was a scholar, I had to  write a letter to the head of the Office of Admission and Aid so that they'll be informed about my shifting. One day an orgmate (who was two batches above me) told me she wanted to talk to me in private. She told me that she heard that I wanted to shift to M.E., and since it was her course, she personally knew how difficult it was. She was genuinely worried that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. She was also worried that the demanding academic schedule might affect my ability to participate in our org. She suggested that I shift to Management instead because it was a SOM course, but it wasn’t as demanding as Management Engineering. Everything she said made sense to me. Just yesterday it seemed like shifting to M.E. was the right decision,   but after she talked to me, I knew I was on the wrong path. I felt so embarrassed when at the end of it all I said, Thank you Chars, but I  already shifted. I regretted it all. I regretted filling out that load revision form that I got from Xavier hall. Why did I rush to have that form signed   by different offices that were stipulated at the bottom of the sheet? Sometimes it took days for the office to sign, but I kept on following it up because I was afraid that I wouldn't meet the department's and the registrar's deadline for shifting. Why didn't I just procrastinate?  When I obtained all the signatures, I even painstakingly followed the instructions on sheet distribution. The sheets are in different colors and each office is assigned a color. Why didn't I just give the office the wrong colored sheet, so that they'll text me and tell me that they  haven't processed my shifting because I gave them the wrong sheet?

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  Why didn't mix up the sheets, then forget which office got which color, so I have to go to every office to figure out which office got  which sheet, until all those inconveniences derailed me from shifting at all? Why did I shift at all? Why?  After a summer in M.E., I heeded my friend’s suggestion and shifted to Management. Since I already shifted twice there was a danger that I would extend for a year. I couldn't extend because I was a scholar, and my scholarship only covers four years. I had no money  to pay for another year. In order to dodge that fate, I decided to overload, which is to take more classes than what is usually required. I also took some classes in the summer. I thought I made the right decision when I shifted to Management, until I got restless. I was already in my second year, and all the write-a-story-about-blank assignments and other equally  creative tasks ceased to exist in my English class. I also felt increasingly miserable. Every time I studied my accounting book, I felt terrible because I thought I was wasting my time slaving over some knowledge that I knew I’d never use in real life. Every time I abandoned that accounting book to either read fiction or write my  stories or songs, I’d feel equally terrible because I was being an "irresponsible student" who was wasting her time on “frivolities.”   All that misery hit its climax when I was told that I had to  write a fifty-page paper on the socks industry. My experience with the socks topic pretty much sucked. I did not care that there was a difference between high knee socks and thigh-high socks. I was bored out of my wits as I researched about the cotton, the wool, the yarn and other materials needed to make socks. Who the hell cares about how many people think which brand of socks sucks or not? It sucked so bad that I realized that Management really wasn’t the course for me. I missed writing. Real writing. Writing about socks just doesn’t cut it for real writing.

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But I was afraid. I remembered all of the times I shifted, and I remembered how every time I thought to myself “I’m really sure of  this one,” and then I ended up hating the course. I didn’t want that to happen to writing, for it was the only thing that I truly loved. I asked my mom, “What if it’s another mistake?” Not missing a beat, she looked at me and said, “Ja, it’s better to make another mistake than to be stuck with your current mistake”. She was right. Mistakes aren’t the ones that we should fear. Never coming out of our mistakes is always worse than adding to the pile. If there was someone who knew a lo t about mistakes it would be Thomas Edison. He once said about failure, “I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say that I discovered 1000 ways that can cause failure.” In the discovery of new mistakes, there are lessons learned, learning that this wasn’t the path that one should take, leading one to narrow down one’s choices, and eventually culminating toward the discovery of the right path. Keep on taking the next path. Don’t grin and bear it. If you’re lost, keep looking. If you just settle, to the world  you may seem ok, but their perception won't negate the fact that you are lost, and you know you are lost. Keep on being lost even if it’s humiliating. Humiliation is a temporary misery, unlike being stuck in something you don't love. It was the summer after my second year in college when I finally realized this. Wasting no time, my mom and I went to the fine arts department, and we talked to the person in charge. He listened intently to what I had to say, but then he told me I'm really sorry but  it's already past the deadline for accepting shiftees.  Aghast, I said but it's just summer pa lang. We have an early deadline, he responded. Okay, I'll just shift during second semester. Creative writing only accepts shiftees at the start of the year, which means, you can only shift during your fourth year. You'd have to extend for a year to finish t he course.

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 It was over , I thought, I'm stuck with socks. I must have looked really devastated because he said   I'll try to appeal to the department chair  if we can still accept you, but if  you are still not allowed to shift, try to apply to get a minor, and  then shift the next year . So that's what I did. Getting a minor isn't so bad, I told myself, but I really wanted to shift. It was already enrollment for the first semester when I was told that my shifting application was approved. As in hindi lang minor? I asked in disbelief. As in, he said.  When I got accepted into Creative Writing, I was incredibly  happy for weeks. I was so happy; crazy things started to happen.  When I come out of the shower, my hair is usually medusa-like, but   weeks after that day, it was magically tame. I usually have a really    bad memory, but I was so happy, my mind was so clear that I memorized several long Dewey decimal codes. I usually ate dinner on the table, but during those days, I couldn't eat because I was too busy  doing pirouettes and grand jetés. I've never taken drugs, but I had an inkling that I was high. It was perfect. It was happiness. It was freedom. Some people ask me:   Do you regret it?  with it  meaning all the courses that I had to go through in order to find what I truly   wanted. I shrug and say Well at least ako lang ang creative writing student na marunong mag-derivatives and anti-derivatives. But seriously, I don’t regret it because now that I have experienced the taste of misery, I know that even though how hard I try, I will never  be able to stop myself from following my dreams. The most ironic part of this whole experience was that even if  I shifted three times, had a total of four courses from different schools in Ateneo (my friends often joke, kulang nalang mag-SOSE  ka at nasulit mo na talaga Ateneo education mo), I still managed to graduate on time, and I even graduated with two medals: Cum Laude and Program Award.

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I wouldn’t have achieved all of those if I wasn't afraid to dream. You shouldn't just accept misery. Misery should be the alarm  bells telling you that something is wrong. You can change things. You can shift. Always opt to shift to the dream.

